I’m selfish. When I started Story Club Minneapolis, I did it because I needed a motivation to write and I wanted to meet local writers. I also -- on occasion -- like unadulterated attention. A spotlight, a working microphone and an audience? Sounds delicious. My love story with the stage didn’t start until my early twenties. It has nothing on my relationship with writing. I’ve been writing stories since the second grade, when Mrs. Hawthorne -- her hair looked like the top of a Q-tip -- announced that afternoons on Wednesdays were officially Writing Workshop time. I write to answer questions. When I was younger, the way I processed parts of my life was through my journal. During those years, my questions sounded like, “Why is my mother always ignoring me?” “How do I get that hot guy to ask me out?” “What’s the deal with Emo people?” These days, the questions have shifted and tend to revolve around thoughts like “What is my identity as a first generation Vietnamese American woman?” “Why do so many white dudes like Asian chicks?” “Why do I like so many white dudes?”

So, I went to grad school in Chicago to learn me some writing skills. Still not sure if those skills ever matured, but Chicago was a blast. That’s where I met Dana Norris -- the founder of Story Club. Back in 2009, Dana had a hard time finding venues to read her creative nonfiction. Luckily for me, Dana’s got what some may call moxie, gumption, hutzpah! She started Story Club as a place to nurture oral storytelling and found herself in the beginning bloom of Chicago’s vibrant live lit scene.

Dana and I met each other in class, but we bonded after a night of speed dating and whiskey. In an alternate universe, we ended up dating each other. In this life, we became friends and collaborators in this beautiful chain of storytelling shows called Story Club.

Fast forward to 2012, when I left Chicago for love in Minneapolis. After about a year of nesting with my partner and writing my graduate thesis, I emerged bleary eyed from my apartment. There I was, an A-type personality with no job and an MFA. After one day of walking all over Uptown and Calhoun Square, I found a venue for the first Story Club to ever expand out of Chicago and hit the ground running.

So, here I am, a lucky writer who has been embraced by the incredibly warm, bizarrely progressive and undeniably talented community of writers and storytellers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Thank you all, for being so welcoming and letting me listen and read your words.